Bruce Rosenbloom

Town officials in Chapel Hill are mulling over the most appropriate approval process for a plan that would put an apartment complex on West Rosemary Street. That complex is intended by local developer Larry Short to be known as Amity Station, but the Chapel Hill Town Council has yet to grant him permission to build. Council members were briefed last week by Ben Hitchings, the municipal planning director, on the ways in which consent for Amity Station could be given. According to Hitchings, the best course of action may entail the formulation of a development agreement between Short and...

A new report on redevelopment options for property once owned by the American Legion in Chapel Hill is putting public opinion at the forefront of design discussions. Those options were synthesized from guidance given by residents during a community charrette facilitated by Dan Jewell and his team of landscape architects. “We had no idea how many people might attend — we hoped there’d be 20, 30, 40, maybe,” he admitted. “To our delight, we had at least 125 people sign the sign-in sheets, and we know there’s probably people that slipped by without actually doing that, so it was...

A planned community may be coming to Chapel Hill, but not before its prospective developer revises a concept plan to which town officials recently objected. That plan was presented to the Chapel Hill Town Council last week by Scott Murray on behalf of Caliber Partners LLC, a commercial real estate firm based in Charlotte. A grocery store was originally intended to anchor the proposed neighborhood, but Murray explained that external pressures forced planners to reconsider that idea. “The grocery that we had hoped to locate on the site has since proven to be nonexistent, frankly, and with the events...

Traffic along Prestwick Road in Chapel Hill will be restricted for at least two months due to a sewer repair project planned by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority. Restrictions go into effect this week as crews with Carolina Civilworks Inc. begin digging in the vicinity of Aloft Chapel Hill and Chapel Hill Fire Department Station Two. Motorists will be denied access to a section of Prestwick Road between Hamilton Road and Elements Restaurant until the completion of the project in September. A news release from the municipal government is advising residents that a large black pipe surrounded by...

Downtown demolitions in Hillsborough are proceeding as part of an infrastructure overhaul project intended to provide additional accessibility options for disabled people. Motorists that traveled along North Churton Street between West King Street and Brick Alley last week were treated to the sight of an excavator dismantling a nearby sidewalk. Other construction vehicles will accompany that excavator this week to prepare the site for the installation of new stormwater pipes and finish stripping the asphalt from the road. Traffic in the vicinity will be subject to lane shifts on weekdays between the hours of 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM...

The NFL is making plays against the effects of sports-related concussions by funding an international study to be led by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill. According to Dr. Johna Register-Mihalik, a co-principal investigator at UNC, that study will focus on therapeutic interventions and return-to-play protocols. “A group of international experts got together and thought about how can we better solve this problem of concussion or contribute better to the management and treatment, and that’s really the genesis of this project,” she offered. “It was really born out of that collaborative spirit, and we’re really excited to be involved in these...

Two construction projects scheduled to start this week in Chapel Hill and Hillsborough will impose traffic delays and water service disruptions upon motorists and local businesses. The disruption in water service will occur in Hillsborough between the hours of 11:00 PM on Sunday and 3:00 AM on Monday while a fire hydrant outside Antonia’s Restaurant is replaced. During those hours, businesses on the west side of South Churton Street between West King Street and West Margaret Lane will not have access to running water. A water pipe under Hillsborough Street in Chapel Hill is also scheduled to be replaced,...

The stage is set at DSI Comedy Theater in Chapel Hill for a community event that will focus less on laughs and more on coping with recent catastrophes. According to Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue, the event is being planned by a committee formed over two years ago in the wake of three local murders. “We started out being called the Muslim Inclusion Committee,” he recalled. “[There are] a number of community stakeholders there — there’s town staff, there’s some local religious leaders, there’s some disaster and crisis specialists, all of whom are community members who felt a...

The Orange County Board of Commissioners will convene this evening to vote on spending nearly $220 million over the course of the next fiscal year. That figure represents the estimated expenditures in a proposed budget recommended by Orange County Manager Bonnie Hammersley for board member approval. Those expenditures were briefed to board members last week by Assistant County Manager Paul Laughton, who offered an itemized look at educational spending. “Current expense appropriation for local school districts total $80,745,847, and equates to a per-pupil allocation of $3,991,” he cited. “The current expense appropriation for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools is $48,530,521;...

Oncologists at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center are seeing trends in terms of black and white after studying the treatment preferences of prostate cancer patients. Those studies were led by Dr. Ronald Chen, who explained that race plays a role in the way that patients diagnosed with prostate cancer perceive and address their disease. “In African-American men, they are almost twice as likely as Caucasian men to be diagnosed with prostate cancer,” he relayed. “They’re more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, but, on the other hand, African-American men tend to choose less aggressive treatment and...

Recent Tweets

Chapelboro.com and WCHL, equal opportunity employers, are dedicated to providing broad outreach regarding job vacancies at the station. We seek the help of local organizations in referring qualified applicants to our station. Organizations that wish to receive our vacancy information should contact WCHL by calling (919) 933-4165.